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About

The History of Moviegoing, Exhibition, and Reception—or HoMER—Project was founded by an international group of cinema scholars in June 2004.

It aims to promote understanding of the complex, international phenomena of film going, exhibition, and reception through several means:

  • Collection, scholarly vetting, and sharing, via the world wide web, of new data on film going, exhibition, and reception;
  • Creation of a portal website that brings these new datasets together and, ideally, makes them cross searchable;
  • Dissemination of new models of collaborative research in the humanities that incorporate faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates in long-term projects, and the development of new ways to incorporate such research into cinema studies and cultural history classrooms;
  • Support for a variety of means of publishing research findings, with particular focus on electronic publication of working papers, works in progress, and unconventionally formatted works that are difficult or impossible to publish on paper—e.g., works that use graphic imaging software for multilayered mapping or works that are very heavily illustrated.

Our Co-ordinators

Talitha Ferraz

Matthew Jones

Talitha Ferraz is a Brazilian professor in cinema and media studies at the Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing (ESPM) and the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Cinema e Audiovisual of the Universidade Federal Fluminense (PPGCine-UFF). She holds a PhD in communication and culture from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (ECO-UFRJ), with a doctoral internship at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCSH-Nova), Portugal. Dr. Ferraz carried out postdoctoral research at the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS) at Ghent University, Belgium. In Brazil, she is coordinator of the research groups Modos de Ver (ESPM-PPGCine-UFF/ CNPq) and Coordenação Interdisciplinar de Estudos Contemporâneos da ECO-UFRJ (CIEC/ECO-UFRJ). Dr. Ferraz is also one of the coordinators of History of Moviegoing Exhibition and Reception – HoMER Network, and member of the following networks International Media & Nostalgia Network (IMNN) and Cinema City Cultures (CCC). Her research area is cinema history, with a focus on cinema exhibition and cinemagoing practices, as well as memory and nostalgia studies.

Matthew Rule-Jones (né Jones) is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter. He is a specialist in film audiences, community cinema and film archives. He is the author of Cinema Memories: A People’s History of 1960s Cinemagoing (BFI, 2022) with Professor Melvyn Stokes (UCL) and Dr Emma Pett (University of York), and Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain: Recontextualising Cultural Anxiety (Bloomsbury, 2019). His current research explores contemporary and historical community cinema practices in the UK. He is collaborating with Cinema for All (formerly the British Federation of Film Societies) on a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust-funded project to catalogue and open the archive of the Federation for the first time since its establishment in the 1940s. As non-commercial, volunteer-led film exhibition prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary in Britain, Dr Jones’ important work is shedding new light on this underexplored aspect of the history of film consumption in the UK and the vital role played by the Federation in this largely untold story.

HoMER conference organisers / network co-ordinators

  • Daniël Biltereyst and Philippe Meers 2007 and 2013/14
  • María A. Vélez-Serna and Lies Van de Vijver 2014 – 2017
  • Clara Pafort-Overduin and Daniela Treveri Gennari 2017 – 2021
  • Åsa Jernudd and Maria Luna Rassa 2021 – 2024
Founding Members
The following participated in the HOMER Project’s founding conference, June 2004
 
  • Daniel Biltereyst, Gent University
  • Kate Bowles, Wollongong University
  • Karel Dibbets, University of Amsterdam
  • Kathy Fuller-Seeley, Georgia State University
  • Douglas Gomery, University of Maryland
  • Amy Howard, University of Richmond
  • Nancy Huggett, Wollongong University
  • Jeffrey Klenotic, University of New Hampshire
  • Arthur Knight, College of William & Mary
  • Richard Maltby, Flinders University
  • Phillipe Meers, University of Antwerp
  • Robert K. Nelson, College of William & Mary
  • Clara Pafort-Overduin, Utrecht University
  • John Sedgwick, London Metropolitan University
  • Robert Silberman, University of Minnesota
Fellow Travelers
The following have lent important intellectual and moral support in founding HOMER
  • Richard Abel, University of Michigan
  • Robert C. Allen, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
  • Martin Barker, University of Wales-Aberystwyth
  • Jane Gaines, Duke University
  • Mark Jancovich, University of Nottingham
  • Hiroshi Kitamura, College of William & Mary
  • Terry Lindvall, Independent Scholar
  • Judith Thissen, Utrecht University
  • Andre van der Velden, Utrecht University
  • Tim White, Southwest Missouri State University